RE: Vertical Damage

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Laserlight [SMTP:laserlight@quixnet.net]
> Sent: Wednesday, August 02, 2000 7:42 PM
> To:	gzg-l@CSUA.Berkeley.EDU
> Subject:	Re: Vertical Damage 
> 
> I have been thinking more about the Vertical Damage Weapon--you
> may have heard the gears grinding--and I've come up with two
> options:
> a) a cutter beam does 1d6 like a PTorp, but vertically.  If you
> get to the end of a column with one shot, you do 1 threshold at
> 5+; if you knock out two columns in one shot, you do a 4+
> threshold, etc.
> 
> b) Roll as Beam dice but also roll 1d6 for location.	1-3 is
> first track (ie armor, if the ship has it), 4-5 is 2nd, 6 is
> reroll; reroll 1-3 is 3rd track, 4-5 is 4th track, 6 is 5th track
> (last hull row for an armored ship).
-----End Original Message-----

a) may be too powerful depending on range and cost. In my original
proposal,
I considered a straight d6, but thought that it provided too many
thresholds
early. So I went with 3 Beam dice.

b) may be too weak depending on how you handle threshold checks. If you
still have hull in the 1st row but your Cutter Beam removes all hull
boxes
in the third row, do you do a threshold check at 6 or 4+? If at 6, the
weapon is less powerful than a standard Beam of the same class (as it
will
take longer to reach a threshold check). If not, is the ship destroyed
if
you destroy all the hull boxes in the last row even if there are still
hull
boxes in the rows above? If handled in the second method, they are less
powerful than regular beams if only a few are used, but more powerful if
many are massed together. How do you handle this weapon in regard to the
Sa'Vasku. I assume that if there is 2 damage tracks left and the
location
calls for the 3rd damage track it would be applied to the second.

-----
Brian Bell
bkb@beol.net	
-----